Could Iran reach the U.S. with a nuclear bomb? A congressman gets it wrong.

Most congressional Republicans applauded as President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement.

Among them was Rep. David Rouzer, a Republican from southeastern North Carolina. Rouzer argued (accurately) on Twitter that Iran is the top state sponsor of terrorism. But then he went a step further.

“The #irandeal ultimately would have guaranteed Iran a nuclear bomb capable of reaching the US,” Rouzer tweeted on May 8.

PolitiFact has heard and reported on a lot of rhetoric surrounding the Iran deal, an agreement signed in 2015 by Iran, the United States, and other nations and championed by former President Barack Obama. In Rouzer’s claim about a nuclear bomb “capable of reaching the U.S.,” the word “guaranteed” stands out to us.

How it works

As part of the deal, Iran drastically limited its ability to build a weapon by giving up 97 percent of its enriched uranium stockpile when it signed the deal. Iran could also build a weapon with plutonium, but the agreement bans plutonium reactors for 15 years and stipulates that Iran must dismantle its current one. Some of the deal’s terms last forever, including a ban on nuclear weapon design and manufacturing.

The Additional Protocol, separate inspection guidelines for the International Atomic Energy Agency, improves international oversight of nuclear fuel. It also allows broader inspections, such as collecting environmental samples at any location to detect radioactive materials.

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the U.S. will not be a part of the Iran nuclear deal. He said the U.S. and its allies couldn't stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon “under the decaying and rotten structure of the current deal.”

By

“In fact, the text of the JCPOA explicitly states that ‘under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons’,” said Elena Chachko, coordinator of Harvard’s Empirical Legal Studies Series and a doctoral student at its law school.

So the deal, on paper, restricts Iran from building nuclear weapons. And so does an agreement among about 190 countries to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, Chachko said.

“As a non-nuclear state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran is banned from acquiring nuclear weapons under international law regardless of the JCPOA,” she said.

A broader point

David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, suggested that the public not judge Rouzer’s words in the literal sense. He agreed with Rouzer’s broader point that, years from now, Iran could have enough materials to secretly build a nuclear bomb.

The Iran deal "kicked the can down the road and did not settle the question of Iran building nuclear weapons,” he said.